Questions About Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

1.Satire—the use of sarcasm or humor to criticize or make fun of foolish or immoral actions or customs of people.
Explain how Harrison Bergeron is a satire.

2.What is this story really about?

3.Think about the three characters, George, Hazel and Harrison:
Explain how and why each of them did or did not change from the beginning of the
story to the end.

4.Is the issue Kurt Vonnegut is making fun of, a real issue? (Give examples) How well do you think he gets his point of view across?

When Life Has No Meaning

pg 8
"Yup, she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget, she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind, " said Hazel."

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

A Question to Ponder

Were the few moments of happiness that Harrison and the ballerina shared worth getting killed for?

Harsh Consequences

pg 8
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Behold the Empress

pg 7
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

The Emperor Chooses His Empress

pg 7
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed,and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

I Am the Emperor!

pg 6
"I am the emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear?" I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

Ladies and Gentlemen...The Real Harrison

pg 6
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

The Photograph Starts to Morph

pg. 6 Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

Poor Harrison

pg 5
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eye-brows shaved off, and cover his white teeth with black caps at snaggle toothe random.

Harrison's Handicaps

The rest of Harrison's appearance was halloween and hardware. Nobody had evr borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. the spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him...but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

We Meet Harrison

pg 5
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. the picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

Ballerina Dancer and her Handicap

pg 4 ad 5
"Ladies and gentlemen--"said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeles melody. "Excuse me--" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

Hazel's Feelings About Trying

pg 4
"That's all right--"Hazel said of the announcer, he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

Connection

What are the forces in your own life that try to make people behave, look, feel all the same way?

What are forces in the world that push people into being the same?

George-His Feelings

pg 4
Hazel says "You don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."
"If I tried to get away with it, " said George, "then other people'd get away with it--and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"
"I'd hate it," said Hazel.
"There you are," said George. "The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

George-GEtting used to things.

pg.3
George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it, " he said. "I don't notice it anymore. It's just a part of me."

Hazel-What's she like?

pg. 3
"All of a sudden you look so tired, " said Hazel.
"Why don't you stretch out on the sofa,so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch."...."Go and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."
..."You been so tired lately---kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls.

Our Thoughts About Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

pg 1 Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts.
I think...Is the writer, Kurt Vonnegut making fun of "normal" people's attention span?

George had intelligence that was above average, but he was given a handicap, a little radio in his ear that transmitted loud noises every twenty seconds.
I see a man who is not able to stay focused on anything for any length of time. It must be terribly frustrating for him. Just when he starts to think of something interesting or important, bam, there goes a noise in his head.

"George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sunded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.
"Huh?" said George.
"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.
"Yup," said George. .......
George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. but he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear scattered his thoughts.

I see ...Two people watching television. Neither of them is really engaged in the program. They seem distracted. The woman reminds me of people you might see in nursing homes-a little vague, a little sad. the man might have a confused look about him. He might be straining to make sense of what he sees, but then sighing, just gives up.

I think...How sad it must be to not be affected by what is going on in front of you-to not be able to think deeply about anything but to simply skim the surface of things. I think that there is no way this kind of life could bring real pleasure.

Writers Hard at work

 

Welcome to Title I. This year we will do a lot of talking and a lot of writing about stories, poems, and pieces of non-fiction that we will be reading. So, hang on. Here we go.